Calen Morelli released another one of his cinematic magic pieces the other day. Personally, I love it. I think it's heading in a proper direction for magic. It's a little outside of staged performance, a little outside of context, but very visually compelling.

     Morelli has always thought & created in an incredibly hyper-visual manner, and a lot of his concepts revolve around the concept of a fixed-frame spectator, because he loves to toy with that frame we view through. While I definitely enjoy the ever-changing frame of the close-up participant, I've been slowly growing to love the frame of the camera, the remote screen viewer, as an anonymous person to perform for.

     Cinematic Magic is something that doesn't necessarily impose the non-fiction boundaries of the Street Magic wave of the 90's, nor is it so deeply rooted in the cinematic pretense of the earlier magic specials of the 80's where there is very a clear performative stage, but combines the complimentary elements of those two styles. It's my proposition that there will be a time for Cinematic Magic in the young adult age of the 2000's (approx. 2015-2025) that will become very popular. (Sort of a knee-jerk societal response to the hyper-real hyper-fake sense of social media and the self, and the media itself we all consume these days.) I know we're doing some work in this area. I know Morelli is doing and has accomplished a lot of work in this area. I wouldn't be surprised if we ran across eachother's paths again sooner than later. 

Cheers, Morelli, love this work,

-- J.R.

We were having a discussion regarding ______ ______ and its presence within the following acts of these three performers: Javi Benitez, Jeff McBride, and Shin Lim.

So we ask you, dear reader, magician or not, some of the questions we were asking each other (which will be discussed in a later post) -- What are some of the similarities you find within these three acts (whether it be in theme, presentation, etc.)? Is one type of framing/presentation more effective or engaging than the other? Do the specificity of the props change the end result (effect/story) of the performance for you? Could you imagine the magicians interchangeably performing the other’s magic equally, or do the performers themselves fit/belong to one type of prop, or magic, more than the other?

-- J.R. 

    This is for you. Yes, you. I’ve been watching the traffic on our site, and I know that you'll visit the Blog section at about this time, well, not exactly when I publish this of course, but I know that you’ll be here, reading this right now, and believe it or not, I’ve come up with a very clever server-side script to execute and only show you this copy I’ve written, especially for you. It’s going to come across a bit rambly, but bear with me here.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about mind reading lately, why do we, as a society, enjoy mind readers? I feel like the idea is preposterous. Now, maybe all I feel is the incredulity of it’s impossibility, the same incredulity that people must feel when I say I’m a magician, but I think this is something you empathize with. This kind of crazy self-realization, that maybe you, too, are, well, not a fake, but maybe a little bit less than genuine all the time, sometimes (scarily) even to people you care about deeply. Maybe, just like me, you want to make people happy, but at the same time, value your own principles over what someone else asks of you. But it’s the little harmless moments like these that makes the world go ‘round.

    It’s amazing what one can come up with when one simply looks at patterns. I know, for a fact, you have a, is that a scar, on your left knee? It’s hard to see all the way from over here, through your device. You’ve come across this post now after you’ve already finished the majority of your work today, and were looking forward to some strange ideas, and instead, you’re being given, what is this, a sort of psychic mind reading from afar? I’ve never heard of anything like this exact thing before. But it calls to me.

    Numbers are coming to me now, I’m getting something regarding the last receipt you had crumpled up in your pocket. Do you remember when that was? Can you fetch it and take it out? I’m not getting much information, except, no, no odd numbers, even numbers. Can you look at the tax figure from your receipt? It ends with an even number, doesn’t it? But now, more numbers, numbers from your location are coming through, it’s all still kind of fuzzy, but I’m seeing, a 2? But it’s so close to 1 and 3. Your population of… Do me a favor, look up the population of your location? The population digits of where you live starts with those numbers, it’s hard to put them in order, but one of those is definitely the first.

    Sorry, that’s all I have for now. Next time, we’ll actually look more into mind readers. Until then, enjoy this reading.

-- J.R.

    In my (all of our) never ending search to decide how best to present magic, I recently stumbled back across a video I saw quite some time ago. It was of Christian Cagigal performing at the Magic Caste. When I first saw this video I was relatively new to magic, but I knew there was something there that I liked, something that hooked me and wouldn’t let go. At the time I didn’t know what it was, but now I think I have an inkling.

    What this video is to me, is an incredible example of Old Fashioned Storytelling. This is how tales, fables, and myths were told, in little rooms in the dead of winter when the days were short and there was nothing to do but tell stories. They are simple and easy to understand, but also universal and involve larger themes. (This is not to say they are profound, exactly, just that they deal with existing, powerful symbols.) He cleaves fast to the Rule of Three and his strict structure (always closing the music box on the same refrain), literally takes most of his props out of a book and titles them like chapters, and everything he touches looks old, tattered, and dear. Because of this I love it. I grew up listening to Old Stories, and being told about their power and how important they were, and I still firmly believe this.

    But none of this really addresses his magic, which is, after all, why we are here. Since his style of storytelling pulls you into that fairytale mindset and leads you through each beat so clearly, the magic hits you in a different way. In a world where fine nobles ride into your town in carriages and mysterious strangers offer you unimaginable wagers, of course wishes come true and cards transform. Now let me be clear: this is not a bad thing. This magic highlights the stories in enjoyable and fun ways and adds a depth of field to an otherwise two-dimensional fantasy. This is highlighted in perhaps the only awkward moment of the show, during the Gambler and the Stranger where he asks an audience member where to put the coin. This is the only overtly ‘magician-y’ thing he does, and it shows. The audience is suddenly left without the flow of the story to guide them, and is torn between trusting the storyteller and distrusting the magician.

    So in that sense I think I love his storytelling, and inasmuch as his magic serves that end I love it too. That said, I don’t think that show contains any “magical moments”. It certainly has moments of surprise, but they are all in service to, or acting as a satisfying conclusion to, the story, which is great, just different. Because of this, I’d say his Search for Truth (warp card) is the weakest segment. Despite containing what might classically be the “strongest” magic (it is straightforward, visual, and quick), it has the weakest story, and the story seems more like a prop to justify the magic, as opposed to vice versa (magic used to illustrate the story). (Also, incidentally, this is the only portion done with normal playing cards, yes because he destroys them, but the fact remains. This is also why some of Christian’s other work, with a less intense storyline, falls a little flatter for me.)

    In sum, I’d say Christian reminds us all that sometimes magic can simply be the beautiful accents that deepen an enjoyable story, and can still be fun and surprising without being the center of attention.

    (To see how an approach like this can re-center the magic without losing the story aspect, look at the Jerx’s Romantic Adventure style or the seance style of magic. Both tend to be about taking a story we all - to some extent - already know, and then poking around that story until something from the story pokes back, usually in an impossible and surprising way.)

-- Z.Y.

Dear Reader -- 

    The Spring of 2017 saw our founding as the Four Suits Magic Collective. At our very inception, our core team consisted of magical thinkers/practitioners who all approach magic from a similar perspective. We collaborated remotely at first, staging some performances at Uptown Bourbon in New York City and creating a traveling seance show (currently under its second iteration), with some of us collected at different cities across the United States, spanning from New York City to Los Angeles. In the Summer, deciding to continue work together in person, our East Coast team members travelled across the country by car, visiting various magic establishments along the way.

    One notable visit during this trip would be with some of the folks at the Chicago Magic Lounge (one of the most forward-looking and promising magic venues in the country, in our opinion) where we look forward to performing at as soon as we get our act together (get it? “act”? Ha.  ha.) (….. ) Another notable stop would be at the residence of a promising young sleight-of-hand mechanic, D.R., one of the best we’ve ever seen, who we look forward to further collaboration with in the future. It was great to see old friends and make new ones during this mini epic of a road trip.
    Arriving in Los Angeles, our core member group would find more time to meet in person, as well as meet other groups and individuals in magic. We regularly attended the Monday and Wednesday “Night Jams” where many magicians would meet to share ideas and otherwise collaborate (shout out to Jeremy and Byron, respectively, for heading those up), in addition to the never-ending sessions at the Magic Castle Club (shout out to the whole Larsen family and membership). Some of the ideas we’ve generated this year have ended up in front of some people in magic we very much respect, such as in JAMM #11 of Andy’s “The Jerx” (world-class magic creator and 2016 Tarbell Award Winner) and with our very first product, the MO Wallet, listing on Penguin Magic online (one of the largest magic distributors worldwide), not to mention the friendships we’ve made with other magic creators in Los Angeles and places along the way.
    We would’t stay in LA for long, traveling to Magic Live and other magic-related conferences throughout the Summer season (also Art of Play's warehouse party in the Fall). In the Fall, some of us travelled to NYC to stage The Woman Illusion, a play that Four Suits Magic produced and provided magic consultation/performance for. The full-length gender-based theatre and magic performance was greeted to sold out audiences at Theater for the New City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

    Returning to LA, in addition to performing our magic at Black Rabbit Rose, the new magic bar & lounge in LA by The Houston Bros., we begun to shift some of our energy to magic on the screen, and have begun production on a series of magic vignettes for distribution later in 2018. In the spirit of putting more of our magic on television/online, at the very close of the year, our team received an invite to audition for Penn & Teller: Fool Us’ 5th season.
    As we take this moment to reflect on 2017 and look forward into 2018, we aim to audition for said show, to generate more meaningful on-screen magic, to continue our performance & creation of new material & products, to visit and/or compete at the following conferences: Magic Live (Nevada), PCAM (California), and Cardistry Con (Hong Kong), to continue creating and performing momentous magic at an expanding list of venues in greater Los Angeles, and, most importantly, to keep making friends, collaborators, and magical experiences along the way. 

    We hope to see you soon.

    We are Four Suits Magic,

    J.R. Z.Y. T.N. H.A.

Dear (Magical?) Reader -- 

     Hey, you know those little circles that are tied up? (This is a post explicitly for a specific subset of magicians, btw) It blows my mind how little actual literature/instructional video there is on the usage of them. I was in The Library the other night, and found literally three instances of instruction. One was a DVD that included a lot of direct variation/riffing of Mesika’s work, another was the classic Mesika work with Finn, and another was a simple, but cool, idea on a card-change by Justin Miller.  Counting another instance I found of a Morelli lecture, and that Guerilla’s DVD that came out way back, there’s been surprisingly little innovation on the usage of these items since the time they first dropped.
     What’s the answer to this lull, you say? Well, we’re releasing an instructional .PDF on the matter, at the same time probably restructuring our “commerce” section of the site to be specifically for magicians/those invested in the art, so that we can better serve the interests of those who come here specifically for how-to magic material, and those who come here for entertainment or our other services. 

Happy New Year!

-- J.R. + The 4SM Team

Dear Reader -- 

We're out of the office until the New Year -- Finishing up some old projects and starting some new ones. Here's to magic!

Cheers,

The 4SM Team.

     A few days back I was watching Nate Staniforth on Scam School. (For those that don’t know Scam School, it was one of my first real exposures to magic, and, despite its certain flaws, will always be one of my favorites. Fight me.) Now Nate has a reputation as a talented creator and performer, with some devastatingly clever methods to his name. So when I watched the coin effect he did in the episode, I was a little surprised. Basically, he taped a coin to his hand, allowing him to do the slowest, cleanest false transfer ever.

Brian’s admirable response to anyone who thinks this method is “cheating”.

     Now there are a couple things about this that I like, and that I want to talk about. The first is that, method aside, he does a really good job of making the vanish magical. He talks about how he uses the spectators hands to frame the space, and how to choreograph them in subtle ways to increase their conviction that the coin is in fact in that hand. The second is that a lot of magicians would call this “cheating.” Nate addresses this in an interesting way. He says “It is cheating. But it’s better; it’s cleaner.” And that makes you step back and think about what’s actually happening. What does it mean he’s “cheating”? Magical is all about cheating the spectors' senses. Sure, we don’t (and shouldn’t) present it that way, but as some point we “cheat” and steal the coin, peak the word, etc. So why would using this simple, simple gimmick be any worse?

     The last point is that, as magicians we do often get caught up in the beauty of the method over the power of the effect. Now this is not always a bad thing. Those beautiful methods often have advantages (say, when you want to perform but didn’t remember to bring your poster tape), and are often important steps on the path to better, simpler methods. But they don’t always translate into better magic, and at the ends of the day that’s what matters most. This hit home today when J.R. and I were playing around with a new book test method we had been developing. We had it to a workable point, but something about it just didn’t seem right. Finally we realized we were too caught up in the beautiful method, and needed to accept that if that methodological road was the one we wanted to take, we should go all out to make it as good and clean as possible for the spectator, even if that meant “cheating” on our end.

-- Z.Y.

     As a disclaimer, I should note that not only did I never learn the 21 Card Trick, I can’t actually even remember ever seeing it performed.

     A couple of weeks ago I was jamming with a few magician friends (almost all card and coin guys), and one of them had brought a friend who had just started practising magic. As I chatted with him I asked him what he was working on and he told me about some moves. I asked what kind of magic he wanted to perform and he said he wasn’t sure. I asked him if he had any effects he was working on that he wanted to show me, and he said he didn’t actually know any tricks, just the moves he had mentioned earlier. Now, let me be clear, for someone who had been practicing for only a few months, he had made incredible progress. He was working on advanced sleights, and he was performing them well. The friend who had brought him and another very talented magician had been mentoring him (and these are some of the most technically gifted guys I’ve ever met, both with published material). Yet somehow in his search to learn he had skipped all the magic, and moved right on to the technical behind the scenes stuff.

     Now this happened for a couple of different reasons: his mentors were also serious cardists, both performed predominantly for instagram, that group was pretty filled with move-monkeys, etc. I know that each of those could use a whole post on their relation to magic and performance (and maybe one of these days I’ll write them…), but the thing that jumped out at me most was that, since he had stepped straight into learning moves (even useful ones like controls, changes, additions, etc) he had missed something that I think we undervalue, and that is the performative experience one gets from doing self-working effects.

     I think just about every magician I know learned some self-working card trick very early on. The 21 Card Trick is the classic punching bag, but there are many. I think mine was naming the top cards from three cut piles using the one-ahead principle. While these effects are rarely the greatest (though I have been getting back into self-workers and man are there some good ones), since they are essentially move-less they allow you to focus entirely on presentation, which is as important a lesson as 100 pointers about where your second finger goes for a certain palm. While we look back on those performances as cringe-worthy, painful, and embarrassing (and I’m sure they were), we forget that they forced us to immediately begin learning how to make people care about the effect (since it would not have flashy visuals to pull them in), and how to invest each part with some meaning (since there was often a lot of procedure), and how to dress up a simple effect with perhaps the least practised but most useful magic sleight there is: acting.

-- Z.Y.

The result of a long night of strange ideas. 

Dear Reader -- 

     Happy Thanksgiving! Be thankful to your pursuits today, and finish something you've been putting off, then start something new. Also, hug a magician.

Cheers,

The 4SM Team.

     Dear Reader -- 

     Last weekend we hit up the Art of Play warehouse party / Buck twins birthday, and it almost felt like a small scale magic convention with all the familiar faces that were there. It was lovely to see old friends and meet new ones, if you met us there and are reading this now, cheers. Some thoughts that keep sticking in my mind after I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience: Cards. Puzzles. Quality. These three words describe Art of Play to me.

     Puzzles: The puzzle element I was very surprised by, in regards to how compelling these puzzles were. I suppose it’s the magician side of us that sees something hidden or obscured and wants to find out the secret. If you have any sort of puzzle itch yourself, I highly suggest you check out their inventory, they stock a number of really fascinating and unique puzzles from creators all over the world.

    Quality: The quality of their products is insane. From everything to their goods, to the mechanics of the space (hello hidden-bookshelf door, private poker/whisky room, etc.), to their ideology, everything was done so thoughtfully. I had a brief conversation with Dan, and it was very clear that this result was not by happenstance, he has a very focused vision of what this company is and what they do.

    Cards: H.A., who was scouring the card racks in the warehouse, had an insightful comment on how she primarily felt drawn to the decks that we had some personal connection to, such as knowing the creators or designers. Personally designed playing cards represent a manifestation of your own aesthetics, and I think it’s absolutely remarkable that we’re able to go from idea to completion with a deck of cards, easier than we were ever able to in history. Now, more than ever, a deck of cards has become a statement of personality and identity. From Jeremy Griffith’s Vitreous playing cards, Omar Renfro’s Red Stripe, the cards, themselves, tell their story. And when placed into your hands, tell yours. 

     What's your magic story?

-- J.R. 

Dear Reader,

     Do you know how, in movies, whenever the entire human race is threatened by some cataclysmic world-ending event, everyone puts aside their own ego, politic, and self, in order for the greater good?

     At the risk of appearing overly sappy or optimistic, this is exactly how I feel about the magic community as a whole. Here we are, all strangers, that met one day in the pursuit of creating something that, ostensibly, exists only in our heads. We create weird plots and effects, craft gimmicks that could pass as some otherworldly artifact, play dress up to unending degrees of strange, spend hours staring at our hands in a mirror, all for the purpose of creating a fleeting magical moment in an as-yet-undetermined person’s thoughts. Sometimes our ideas don’t even leave our living rooms: we’re in love with the process as well.

     I think we, those who take a vested interest in magic, belong to an increasingly special, supportive community. Rarely do practitioners of such great disparity in experience or skill share their literal secrets, their life’s work, careful tradecraft, all for the simple goal of sharing what they know to benefit others. This is why I find the magic community to be such a special place, and why I wax poetic about it today. We’ve been around for thousands of years, all for us to arrive at this very moment, and continue to create new, fun, and mesmerizing experiences for those around us. Thank you for being here.

-- J.R.

     Today we post an excerpt from an interview we had a few months back in Las Vegas, with the one, the only, "RxGamble". She has earned herself a rare spot amongst the professional gambling elite, with an earnings figure in the million+ range. We're honored to have spent time with her talking about some of the techniques she has employed, and to hear more about her story. Thank you for sharing your words with us and to our readers!

---

J.R.: What are you up to these days? 

RxGamble: Well I have a baby, so I’m raising him. I’ve played two tournaments over the summer, and besides that... I’m playing blackjack every two months, and I’m writing my book. The book is taking up a lot of time.

J: So, with the blackjack - why every few months? 

R: It’s hard to get away cause I can’t play anywhere in Vegas... that’s worth playing at least. So I have to travel, and it’s so hard to go away with the baby. I travel and I have to wear disguises sometimes and it’s just a lot of work and I kind of don’t - I’m not over it, but it’s not as fun as it used to be. It used to be a good time.

“...look at this dealer.” and I was like okay... so I was like 20 ft away, I could see pips on the card and I was like “Oh my god, I can’t believe this!”

J: Okay so you mostly do that when you’re traveling then. What happens when you walk into a property now? 

R: If I was to walk into a **** property and they were to recognize me, they would arrest me right away. And, honestly, **** properties have never kicked me out but I have an inside guy and he’s like, “Yeah, they want to kick you out.” So I have my lawyer working on getting them to overturn that opinion, he’s in talks with them right now. If I get kicked out of a **** property, they communicate with other casinos, and then the other casinos are like “We don’t want you here, even if you didn’t do anything here.” That’s what **** properties are doing, “Oh, we know about you so...” 

J: Huh...

R: And then even across the country I don’t want to go into **** properties because it’s kind of a grey area, like am I allowed in there or not? I think I am technically. But I just don’t want to deal with getting arrested and having a baby and being like, “Your mom’s in jail.” it’s just, I’m kind of over that. Do you play blackjack? Do you guys, do you count or hole-card? 

J: Mostly ****. But the hole-carding thing is very very interesting. We’ve never been able to find a spot where that consistently works. 

R: They’re a lot better these days, I mean there’s still a lot of games out there... but it used to be like Disneyland. 

J: How do you even go about finding that?

R: Someone else showed me.. I was counting cards and I had heard about hole-carding -- this was like in 2000 or something -- and I didn’t know how to find one. I was walking around, like where do you even start? So this guy I know took me down to the **** and he was like, “Just stand here in the center of the table and look at this dealer.” and I was like okay... so I was like 20 ft away I could see pips on the card and I was like “Oh my god, I can’t believe this!” So once you see it you know what to look for and once you get better at it you don’t need to see that much of the card or it doesn’t have to be that sloppy: You get better at it.

J: Yeah, right. 

R: So you walk. You walk a lot and you look at every dealer. Don’t miss a dealer, that’s basically it. 

J: That’s crazy, and those were just, high limit, low limit?

R: Didn’t matter. I’ve played high limit rooms and 5 dollar tables, they’re [the dealers] all over. I wouldn’t even say there’s not as many. It’s just they’re on the East Coast mostly. Puerto Rico used to be really good for them.. I haven’t been to PR in a long time. 

You think you have all these opportunities... you’re doing really well ... then suddenly you’re banned from all the **** properties.

J: Wow, so I guess, moving backwards though, what was your first introduction into this world of A.P. and just how did you get involved? What was the first time you remembered getting turned over into it?

R: My mom was a dealer and she thought I would be good at card counting. She dealt at the ****  and uh, they would kick card counters out all the time and I was 18 and she said, “I think you’d be good at this.” and I was like... “Too hard, too hard...” I didn’t even think about it until I was dealing blackjack and this guy that I worked with was quitting his job. I asked him why he’s quitting and he said “I’m going to play poker and count cards in Laughlin.” And I was like, “Really, you can do that for a living?” So I went online and I found BJ21. I don’t know if you go to that forum. BJ21 is the largest black jack forum. I went on there and there was this community of card counters and hole-carders and I was just like wow this is awesome -- I went down to the gamblers book store and I got BlackJack for Blood. I learned my count and I was dealing in California and I was going to Vegas on the weekends to count cards and I’d go back to California to deal blackjack and when I was here one weekend that was when that guy was like, “Let me show you hole-carding...” 

J: And that that kind of broke it off for you.

R: Yeah my life seriously changed and I quit my job and I just, that was it.

J: I mean at that point. The edge is so ridiculous. 

R: Oh my god yes. And when I saw my first hole-card I didn’t even realize you could hole-card other games it was just like you can hole-card 3 card poker ultimate, like I didn’t even think about it and then here comes beyond counting and you’re like, wow you can hole-card anything! 

J: Do you have any advice for those looking to get into this? 

R: Your world as you get better and better -- it gets very small. The better you are the more know... Vegas is too small for me now so I have to travel a lot. You think you have all these opportunities, and you think you’re doing really well this year this year and this year and then suddenly you’re banned from all the **** properties. I’d say be careful with your money. It’s not always going to be the same and you should always be looking for the next move. Like I didn’t learn how to shuffle track and maybe I should have and now I think about it and I think I don’t want to deal with it. I went from counting to hole-carding to sorting so there’s always something new to do which is always good. And then there’s poker on top of that. Always look for the next move. Be very aware that it’s not always going to be great. You can have a great game but they could swap the dealer and now you don’t have a game. I wouldn’t suggest anyone do this for a living. I’ve been doing it for like 15 yrs now and I have no other skill that can get me a job. I can deal cards and I started gambling and now... I don’t have a “life” skill. So unless I open up a business I just have gambling that I can do. I don’t suggest anyone do it as a living, but it can be very worthwhile while you’re doing it. You can make a lot of money.

---

RxGamble can be found on Twitter and Instagram or, if you're sharp enough, at the card table.

     One of the things I have always loved most as a magician is hanging out with other likeminded magicians and jamming. That is, improvising and playing with effects on each other where none of us know where it is going. Maybe one of us forces a card, but the person selecting it had already palmed out a card and switched it in for their selection. They then pass off the forced card to another friend who loads it into the forcing magician’s bag without their knowledge to be used later in the effect or simply found minutes, hours, or days later with a confused grin. Meanwhile someone else has stolen the rest of the deck and replaced it with a different backed deck, but with a cover card to hide the switch. The effects end up being elaborate, confusing, silly, and most of all surprising because no one can ever keep track of everything that happened. This has always been the most fun since it is magic at its most organic and honest. It’s kind of like a jazz ensemble improvising together: incredible in the moment, but impossible to recreate or bottle, and very hard to share with anyone not taking part.

     This post unfortunately does not end with a clever idea, but instead an open question: how we take this more honest, spontaneous, and relaxed experience of magic to non-practitioners?

-- Z.Y.

     This is part three of a short series, so make sure to check out The Dangers of Mentalism: An Introduction and The Dangers of Mentalism: Walking a Line by Necessity

     The best magic presentations draw on something known outside the effect, something the spectator is already familiar with (or at least aware of). This allows them to put the effect in context and places the experience not as an isolated incident of “magic”, but as a experience woven into an existing thread of thought.

     Some traditional (read: trite and overdone) magic presentations make no pretense towards this, such as those centered on woofle dust or magic wands. No layperson has ever authentically encountered those concepts in any context other than in other magic shows or children's books. Others, however, did at least make an attempt. For example ones that centered on the power of imagination or memory at least tried to connect the effects to externally valid ideas and experiences. Obviously, as external anchors for magic these are vague at best, but are a step in the right direction. The question, then, is what kinds of real-world concepts are best to connect to.

     This is where the idea of Fringe Spaces enters play. For a concept to be a good anchor for a magic presentation it needs to be both familiar, or instantly recognizable, but also not fully understood. The fact that it is familiar ensures that the experience will have something existing to weave itself into. The fact that it is not fully understood allows the actual “magic” to happen in that interplay between what clearly isn’t, and what might just be.

     Fringe spaces obviously change with time and culture. Where once electricity itself was a Fringe Space and performers could make entire shows out of passing current through their bodies, now something like quantum physics takes it place. Where once Spiritualism was the cultural craze, now its psychological readings (see shows like Sherlock, Psych, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, or the spread of NLP). Like these trends, the best magic presentations will come and go with the times, always connecting themselves to something known but not understood.

     The wide spread, but changeable, nature of these fads, when thought about with the criteria from the previous post, help explain what is a bad presentation, what is a good presentation, and what is a dangerous presentation. A bad presentation is hard to connect to existing experiences and clearly doesn’t even pretend to explain what occurred. A good presentational frame is one the audience member recognizes and that could perhaps (but of course in truth does not) explain what happened. A dangerous presentational frame can be the same as a good one, but with the addition of the fact that it changes or affects the way the audience makes meaningful decisions. This can be a change in their views on ESP,which causes them to lose thousands to fraudulent psychics, it could be that they believe this miraculous procedure turns black paper into hundred dollar bills, that they believe NPL will solve all their problems and spend money they do not have on hucksterish ‘success seminars,’ and so on. These presentations can make very exciting and entertaining effects to watch, but can have very real and negative consequences for the spectators.

     While you are not responsible for every poor decision your audience makes after your show, do realise that you are spending an immense amount of time and energy to make them see something impossible, and, if you are doing your job well, then intentionally or not some of them are going to believe it, and walk away slightly changed. While you know the edge of your abilities is the theater door, they do not.

     To ensure that you are always using the Fringe Space, and that it is not using you, try to match the unbelievability of the effect to the believability of the presentation frame. If the presentational frame is believable, use it to explain something so unbelievable that even if they think the frame is real they couldn’t possibly believe it explained that effect. This is not to say magic should never change the audience, but we should recognize that whenever man’s reach exceeds his grasp, there’s a huckster waiting to sell him the next handhold.

-- Z.Y.

     I almost feel sad sharing this secret, but let it be known that Marc Kerstein is changing/has changed the game of app magic. The reason why? IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE APP MAGIC. We all (some of us in reality, but “all” sounds better, and makes you search it if you didn’t know it already) remember the days of having that little folded playing card, or silver dollar bouncing on our home screen, to shake it out and have a physical version land on our hand. Xeno is probably the opposite of this type of an app. It’s pretty much invisible with the correct implementation.

     You can look up the official description of the app on his site, but if I were to describe my use of the app to someone, I’d describe it this way: You’re chilling at a bar/cafe with your friends. They have their phones out (2017, folks, the future is here), you ask to borrow their phone after they open their web browser and navigate away from porn (future, again). You ask them if they’re a big movie person, and then you type in a movie ratings site. You ask them to scroll to their favorite movie and then familiarize themselves with the plot, director, year of release, etc. They put their phone away. Then you have them place their hands on yours, look into your eyes, and while you make out with them, you divine the movie they were thinking of (secret of tongues).

     Isn’t that crazy? Yes. With Xeno, you can too make out with complete strangers (don’t do this). Seriously though, huge fan of this effect. Good on you Marc. You’re crushin’ it. Xeno is simple, direct, and if you hang out with the smartphone crowd, you’re looking for a clever addition into your mentalism repertoire, want an effect that can be performed in a multitude of situations (dope-ass pre-show, anyone?) all for less than $20? Purchase this effect. 

-- J.R.

Fingers feeling stiff, but much better now this week. Thankfully. Enjoy a text conversation from earlier this year between two magicians.

H.B.
    Q: what is magic?
J.R.
    ARTFUL DECEPTION
H.B.
    What do you mean by that? What is artful in the context of deception? Why is deception artful? What makes certain deceptions magic and other ones lying?
    (Also there's antifaro stuff on the new ellusionist thing)
J.R.
    Deception isn’t inherently artful. Deception is artful when it is done without direct personal/emotional/material subversion or gain by the practitioner, and done, instead, for “art”. It’s all about the framing of the experience. This is what makes certain gambling demonstrations “magic” in my opinion, and actual gambling deception “not magic”.
H.B.
    What is an example of a gambling demo that is not magic? And what is an example of one that is?
    Sorry to grill you... The Tony Chang thing got me thinking, which is nice... You've a bit more experience so I'm picking your brain
J.R.
    Actual cheating at the card table isn’t magic. However, telling someone you’re going to cheat is, and which classifies it as demonstration of skill, Fitzkee talks a bit upon in Trick Brain
H.B.
    Ok... I accept that and am filing away the reading rec... What does magic intend?
J.R.
    Intends to disrupt
H.B.
    What do you mean by that? I'm also extremely impressed with how quickly these answers are coming
J.R.
    Well, the topic comes up fairly often actually. But it exists in order to create a disruption in people’s perception. It exists to find these natural gaps in the mind and make them just a little bit bigger. Sometimes you can fit a finger in, sometimes your foot, and sometimes you can stand in it. A wave of astonishment, to paraphrase Paul Harris [found in opening essay of Art of Astonishment, V1]. And sometimes the magician themselves can even splash around for a moment or two.

-- J.R. + H.B.

Blogging means writing. Writing means using my hands. Fractured my finger this week, so no post this time around.

-- J.R.

     This is part two of a short series, so make sure to check out Part One: The Dangers of Mentalism: An Introduction a couple posts back.

     Magic is necessarily about presenting something impossible as possible. Within the context of the magic trick this is fun and exciting, and it is accepted that different magicians ask different levels of credulity from their spectators when they perform. While that is all well and good while the effect is being performed, I think it is important to think about the longer-term consequences of our presentational choices. This is partially because the drama which the spectator remembers is just as important as that which they witness, but also because, if we are going to spend immense amounts of time carefully constructing effects that convince, or seem to convince, someone something is real, we should be cognizant of what that belief (honestly intended or not) could lead to.

     While this applies to almost every branch of magic, mentalism stands out as the clearest example because of its long and fraught connection with spiritualism and occultism (and the charlatanism that goes with it; this is not supposed to be a put-down of spiritualism, simply a statement that theatrically intended mentalism should not be conflated with it). The most common modern way of avoiding this confusion is to present mentalism as psychological reading of tells, eye movements, Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) word associations, and the like (thanks Derren). This neatly sidesteps the problem, correct? Wrong.

     To understand why, we have to step back and think about why it is so important that mentalism try to get away from spiritualism. It’s not that spiritualism is more or less real than other magic presentations (which include everything on the spectrum from Woofle Dust to quantum mechanics). And (I hope) it’s not just that many magicians think spiritualism is a weak presentation (because if I have to hear one more time about how “the power of your imagination” makes the card change I swear to god…). What I would say, though, is that spiritualism is a significantly more nuanced presentational frame than most, it has a more direct bearing on many people’s lives (more, I think, than many magicians think) than other frames, and it has more potential to be misused and abused than most. So for example, though quantum mechanics is incredibly complicated and nuanced in terms of what it actually does and does not explain, very few people encounter it directly in their daily lives, so a magician fudging the truth about it won't really change any choices they make in the day to day, and there are established credentials that indicate who is actually an authority on it (do they have a PhD after their name?). Alternatively, Woofle Dust has no nuance (there is no grain of truth, and the audience knows it), and rarely occurs in people’s lives.

     If we look at NLP, micro expression reading, body language mirroring, etc, we see that they fit these criteria as neatly as spiritualism does. These concepts come up in, and therefore influence, people’s everyday lives quite regularly, as they are simply methods of talking and interacting with people, something we are all doing constantly. Additionally, they are nuanced in that, while all built on grains of truth and elements of reality, they are often blown out of proportion and exaggerate, either by over eager media, or by hucksters hoping to make a quick buck off of them. This then also explains why they are dangerous: they are easily exploitable by those seeking to profit from those unclear on what and how these ideas actually work. And therefore magicians blithely bolstering their credibility can be doing real harm as well.

     But was it by accident that mentalism stumbled directly from one moral grey area to another? I would say no. I think magic needs these “fuzzy spaces” between what is known and accepted, and what is actually understood. Magic has always, and always will, draw on these fringe spaces to operate and give its effects backdrop and meaning.

    More on what I mean by “fringe spaces”, and how to use them without letting them use you, next time.

-- Z.Y.